Stephen van Vlack
Sookmyung Women`s University
Graduate School of TESOL
Teaching Writing - Spring 2007
Questions for Scot (1996), Chapter 1: Writing Competence (Week 2)
1. What are some of the important variables that are used in trying to determine someone`s writing competence?
In trying to come up with ideas about writing competence what we're really doing is assessing the writing ability of a student, a colleague, whoever. Thus, any idea of writing competence is going to be absolutely dependent on ideas of what is good writing or even excellent writing and what is really maybe not very good writing. In effect, it's all about evaluation. At this point it should be clear to all of us that any kind of evaluation has to have some sort of the validity. There must be certain points that we can focus on which allow us to give an honest and valid appraisal of someone's writing. Scott (1996) claims that there are universal aspects to which she terms "good writing." As a way of trying to get this universal assessment of good writing again we need to try to find certain variables. According to Scott (1996) there are several important variables, which are listed below here.
-Knowledge of the writing process
Knowledge of the writing process basically relates or refers to the issue of planning. It should be clear to everyone that planning is of central importance to effective writing, and remember that when I refer to writing for the most part in this course I will be referring to composition. Knowledge of the writing process not only allows people to plan but, through effective planning, also allows them to put forth much tighter, better constructed and organized pieces of writing. We mentioned in class the distinction between macro and micro levels in writing and of course the writing process allows people to form better control over both of these aspects. As you become more experienced in looking at people's writing and assessing writing you'll probably be able to tell very quickly whether someone has followed, or indeed used, the stages of the writing process or not in their composition because if they didn't the composition will probably be sloppy on all levels.
-T-units
T-units are a basis of measuring complexity of linguistic structures produced in composition. The idea behind t-units is very simple. A t-unit is short for a thought unit and basically it is a clause. Therefore to determine t-units all you need to do is count the number of clauses in one sentence. To do this just count the main verbs. The basic idea behind this is that as people become more proficient writers they begin to construct more complex sentences. The creation or the ability to be able to create complex sentences enables people also to be better writers. Through higher complexity, writers can put forth a larger number of ideas more quickly and more efficiently to form greater shading of meaning. The t-units is one way of measuring this developing ability of grammatical control and this is claimed to affect writing ability in a general sense as well.
-Coherence and cohesion
Coherence and cohesion exist across two very different planes. The former is macro and the latter is micro. At the same time they are often depicted as being related because both work to form a better piece of writing in a similar way. Coherence refers to the types of topics that a writer deals with. The idea being that topic shifts should make sense and that topics should be related. The writing as far as the topics go should be very coherent to the reader. Cohesion occurs at the micro level and prefers to elements which link the topic elements of coherence. In this way we can see how they go together. Taken together we can also see how extremely important they are to a `good` piece of writing. Good writers need not only to stay on the mark topically but they also need to find ways of weaving lines through their text which allow people to follow the train of thought in the text with a high degree of reading fluency which can only come from writing fluency.
-The making of meaning
All linguistic endeavor centers around the making or interpretation of meaning either internally or externally. Writing, as a productive task, obviously centers around the creation of meaning, and meaning which must be interpretable to a reader. Therefore, a good writer must know how to manufacture meaning. Bear in mind that language is an indirect representation of the world. At the basis of language are concepts. We make meaning by stacking and overlaying, if you will, concepts in some sort of pattern which is interpretable and therefore means something to another. Of course in writing the tools we use for this are lexical units and syntax (the linear arrangement of those units). Good writers need to be familiar with both these different aspects of the language they are working with and if they aren't they won't know how to create meaning in that language. It may also be necessary for a good writer to know about the world as seen from that language as well.
-Meaning, authority, voice, development, design, clarity
The last of these different elements that Scott (1996) mentions as necessary for good writing is the most general. What she's referring to when she uses terms like authority and voice is how the writer approaches certain concepts. This varies of course from language and language and culture to culture, but in English writing readers expect writers to be direct without being aggressive, persuasive without being pushy. Interestingly inexperienced writers seem to be quite indirect no matter what they language background. They lack the authority or the voice to state somewhat controversial concepts or ideas in a direct, straight forward manner. Therefore by looking at this set of variables we can get a feel for how comfortable someone is with their own self as a writer.
2. How and why is the idea of transfer of such paramount importance in the area of second language writing research?
As foreign language teachers and students in this TESOL master's program you should all be acutely aware of the phenomenon of transfer. It is an extremely important topic and one which must be explored more deeply at all levels, but sadly, is often ignored. All too often, here in Korea at least, we are confronted with negative views on transfer. As a direct result of this negative view very often as teachers we encourage our students not to transfer by focusing much more on differences than similarities between Korean and English.
All the same, in the automatic-based processes like speaking the possibility for negative transfer or interference is somewhat high in the initial stages of development. This is explainable based on the idea that language forms become entrenched due to frequency affects. Students, when they go to speak will immediately be confronted with a plethora of different Korean forms simply because the Korean forms are supercharged for use. In our haste to create spoken utterances we often wind up mixing elements of different languages we know based on levels of entrenchment.
Now, writing is a whole different thing. Speaking is an automatic based process, there is little time to monitor what you're going to say before you actually say it. Writing, on the other hand, takes time and in fact monitoring is an extremely important process in writing. Everybody is supposed to carefully monitor their writing before, during and of course after actually writing. What this means for us as teachers is that transfer is possible. Not only is transfer possible but we would expect to find a much more positive type of transfer in the writing process simply because there is time to filter out the negative aspects from the transfer. Studies have shown, and we will be reading a few of them in this class, that transfer in writing is a reality.
Proficient writers in one language end up being proficient writers in their second language. Writers who are not proficient in their first language often have tremendous difficulty being proficient in the second language. Some people might even claim that the first language, provided it is still being used on regular basis, can actually put a cap on second-language development. These are extremely important topics and we need to talk about in this class. If we can only get our students to transfer what they already know and can do we have just made our jobs so much easier. The sad reality related to writing anyway is that most Korean students have not actually learned to compose very well in Korean. This may very well create a very tough cap on their English writing proficiency.
3. How does writing relate to speaking?
The issue of how writing relates to speaking is something that we have addressed already quite a bit in this class. I am, therefore, not going to write a long treatise on their similarities and differences. They should hopefully be clear from the whole work that you did last week addressing this very issue. All I will mention on this point is that it must be clear to all that at some point writing and speaking to actually blend together. As with any kind of category each has a central core point and also a fuzzy boundary. We mentioned in class last week how chatting on the Internet with some messenger program is somewhere between speaking and writing. A format like chatting seems to encompass aspects of both productive forms. There is distance between the parties involved but this distance is greatly reduced related to standard writing practices and this has a great effect on the forms that people use. Another aspect of crossover between speaking in writing would be something like speech writing. When someone gets up and makes a formal speech even though they are speaking, it is more often than not writing simply in spoken form. Formal speeches are planned and in fact it are probably written down in the first place. Another crossover area that might surprise you would be things like movies. Even though people in movies speak it must be born in mind that the words the actors speak were first written by a writer. We, therefore, need to be quite careful about distinguishing what is really a prototypical form of writing and what is the prototypical form of speaking. As language teachers what we often give our students in the form of speaking is actually writing. Keep that in mind.
4. How do `functions` and `modes of discourse` correlate?
How `functions` and `modes of discourse` correlate is fairly straightforward. The function in our production is the purpose or the need which az writer/speaker seeks to fulfil through a specific linguistic endeavor. There are millions of different functions which researchers tried to break down into smaller more discreet, studiable areas. These functions are often viewed as being universal although it is certainly true that some languages tend to ignore or shun certain functions. When we go to produce language the first thing that pops into our head is our purpose, the function. We might not be actively aware of what our function is but at some deep psychological level we need to be aware otherwise we couldn't write or speak for that matter. The function then comes first and foremost and is often subconscious. Modes of discourse relates to the different types of discourse formats which we can use. The first decision that anyone is going to make in their production of language is going to be to try to match a particular mode of discourse to the function that they are trying to fulfill. Only then can the painstaking process of actually producing the utterance or piece of writing take place.
Here's a simple example, imagine that I decide in class to smack five students in the face every day. Just for fun. I do this just to make sure that everybody stays scared and actually hates me because that's how I think the class should run. Of course you might not like this especially if you get smacked every day. Obviously you need to do something about this. As humans the way that we deal with issues (hopefully) is through language. You therefore have a specific function: you wish to stop the snacks, and probably you want me to be fired, and possibly get a fine or go to jail. There might even be other functions. Based on what your ultimate goal or need is you'll then make a careful decision about how best to go about feeling this goal. As writers we have a wide range of different modes of discourse that we can choose from. Good writers will know which one to choose and will make it work for them. That's really what it's all about. That's the beginning of writing.
5. How does the infamous distinction Krashen made about learned and acquired material relate to writing competence?
This is simple, fun, and enlightening. Most of us are probably aware that Krashen, back in the 1980s made a very strong claim about the distinction between learned and acquired material, the idea being that the two are not connected and can never be connected nor can one turn into the other. To use a term for theoretical linguistics, they are in fact mutually exclusive. In the area of writing this claim, in addition to his entire input hypothesis, has been taken a little more seriously than in the area of speaking where it was immediately and viciously rejected from its very beginning. This theory has been better accepted in writing because it is generally believed that much of writing is learned not acquired. Let's just make a very general statement and say that the macro parts of writing must be learned. The micro parts (that is, the parts related more closely to forms) could possibly be acquired and acquired through massive input just as Krashen has claimed in his input hypothesis. For this reason Krashen, himself, has turned almost all his attention to the development of reading and writing, that is literacy development. It may be the only place where his input hypothesis actually works in language, at least a bit. The problem, however, is that even though writing is learned and is not automatic we need to use automatic processes to decode our writing. This is problematic and fun to think about.
6. How does grammatical knowledge relate to writing?
Obviously good writing is reliant on knowledge of grammar. Grammar in this case basically refers to forms or the micro level of writing. We stated in class how important the micro level is to writing. It is where the basic meaning is created and arranged and held together so that the writing makes sense and is easy to read. Obviously we can't write without it and the greater our grammatical knowledge the better potential we have as writers.
7. What does research into the writing process tell us about `good writers`?
Research into the writing process started back in the 1970s when researchers became interested in coming up with a new way of teaching writing to their students, and of course the original focus was on native speaker students. Teachers at the time were somewhat disenchanted by some of the traditional methods for teaching writing and wanted to find something that was more holistic but also somewhat controlled. The idea they had was very simple. They decided to send a list of questions to well-known writers asking them about what they do when they go about writing. Surprisingly what they found was that most of these successful writers actually went through the same type of process in preparing and producing their pieces of writing. Taking this into account the writing process was created and developed as an approach to writing and teaching teaching. For us as both teachers and learners of writing what we want to try to remember is that there is a certain process which all good writers seem to follow. It would seem to therefore make sense that we should also try to follow this is as much as we can and to get our students to follow this. In short, the writing process does in fact seem to work.